Tuesday, May 15, 2007

work begins!

From Bambi:

Work began this past weekend with Moss, Matt, Daisy, Zinnnia, Michel,
Symbient, Wave & myself showing up for three days of lovely weather. Ken
from Newfane stopped by for a visit on Monday.

All of the spring flowers were popping out all over along with the garden
seeds planted at the last work weekend. The variety of vilolets: yellow,
light blue, and whites along with a flowering dogwood near the brook made
way for sightings of trout lily and spring beauties. Three deer were sighted
in the new meadow munching along a perimeter of of dafodils and we found
beer tracks in the mud near the workshop area.

We all worked on mapping out a schedule for the work (something which I'll
post on the website calendar), disussed next steps before Whitman begins,
cleaned out the kitchen, splitting the summer's firewood (thanks Moss for
hauling the splitter down), filling drums for wash water, and seeding in the
new meadow with conservation mix and red clover. We also set up the workshop
with the red frame & tarps as well as heralding the arrival of the timber
framing tools.

Wave has arrived to start his extended stay on the land until early June.
Please make a point of visiting to say hullo. We're planning on having work
weekends every weekend in the foreseeable future to begin work on the
timbers again. The hope it to have dedicated crews pull things together so
we can raise the walls at the Governess gathering. Come on up and help out
with the timber framing, tend the garden, or help out with making meals.

While we were on the land, we'd hoped to make it down to Azteca to have a
well deserved dinner out. Well sadly, it's closed. We'll have to look into
options for getting water and a good burrito. We ended up at Nick's Sports
Bar and had the place to ourselves harrying the barkeep with orders of curly
fries as we switched the TV to the Nature channel. We also made it down to
the diner in Chester where we crammed into a booth (for a bit) and were
treated to a sample of some fine custard. Yum. I won't mention the run to
Baba-a-Louis for cream puffs and other pastries.

Thaddeus was able to make it up to gravel and grade the road, something
which was sorely needed after amazing mud! We're asking folks to try to
drive up the road slowly! Put your vehicle in a lower gear, it will give
your engine more torque to make up the hill and it won't rip up the fresh
gravel.